David Bentley Hart to Lead Colloquium on "Mind, Soul, World: Consciousness in Nature"

David Bentley Hart to Lead Colloquium on "Mind, Soul, World: Consciousness in Nature"

On Monday, March 14 and Tuesday, March 15, the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS) invites you to take part in Mind, Soul, World: Consciousness in Nature,” a Templeton Colloquium led by Dr. David Bentley Hart, 2015-2016 Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS.

In this Templeton Colloquium, Professor David Hart will explore the mystery of consciousness (the entirety of mental life), posing critical questions such as the place of nature within mind, and probing more traditional assumptions about the physicalist emergentist accounts of the origins of consciousness. In dialogue with other scholars he will take up the idea that careful reflection on the nature of consciousness yields an understanding of consciousness to which certain classical understandings of the soul (Western and Eastern) may prove far better suited than more materialist reductionist approaches.

No registration is necessary, and the colloquium is free and open to the public.

This colloquium brings together scholars from history, philosophy, and theology to examine critical topics about consciousness including whether consciousness can evolve or emerge from matter, intentionality and the transcendental ends of consciousness, classical metaphysics of the soul, Eastern contributions to the understanding of consciousness, and the soul and the whole of being.